Heavenly Delusion – 13 (Fin?) – The Final Outside

The four older former occupants of “Heaven” explore more of the woods outside the outside of the breached wall, but Mimihime heads back to check on Tokio, and Shiro follows, while Taka and Anzu continue on.

Sawatari mixed up Tokio’s child with its twin—or more likely clone, and basically guesses as to which is which, and which one is the one to whom  Tokio gave birth. Maru, likely one of those babies, is weary of how long Kiruko has been gone.

When he reaches the bridge to the Large Filtration Plant, two guards try to stop him, but when they mention Robin is “having fun” with an “old flame”, Maru tosses them into the drink. The two guards outside the plant are also no match for a Maru on a mission.

The Haruki within Kiruko sees a memory that couldn’t have been his, and he contemplates whether (and how far) he has merged with his sister, finally wishing that Maru would save them. Just then, the door to her room opens and there is Maru.

When Maru spots an open-shirted Robin carrying a tray of coffee to Kiruko’s room, he death-stares him into a dead end. Every time Robin tries to flee, Maru pushes him back into that dead end, then starts punching the shit out of him, something Robin most definitely deserves.

Sawatari and Aoshima present Tokio with her baby—it only eventually dawns on her that this is what was taken from her body—and the two seem to imprint immediatley. When the demented, bloodied, but still tickin’ Director tries to take the child from Tokio, the latter’s eye’s glow and the director is engulfed by a terrible light.

Mimihime and Shiro get lost in the woods, and when the ground beneath Mimihime gives way and she starts to fall off a cliff, Shiro dives after her, and cushions her fall. When he comes to she asks why he did something so reckless to save her, Shiro finally a admits he’s in love with her, a fact that seems to make Mimihime weep with joy.

Now reunited with Maru (and dressed), Kiruko laments over how weak they are, but Maru takes this opportunity to make clear that he’s sure he’d be friends with Haruki, and he’s into girls, it’s Kiruko—not Kiriko or Haruki—whom he loves.

Kiruko tears up their photo of Robin, as the ideal of who he was is gone and was never true to begin with, and scatters the torn bits into the wind. Now that they’ve completed what they wanted to do, they recommit themselves to searching for Heaven in the van with Maru.

Back in the past, Mimihime, Shiro, Anzu and Taka are on a boat bound for a big, brightly-lit city, which confirms they’re living in a time prior to the fall of civilizaiton. But if these children are doomed to become vicious monsters, that shining civilization isn’t long for this world.

So Heavenly Delusion rather abruptly ends without much fanfare. If I wasn’t sure this was the final episode of the season, I’d have expected another one to air next week. There’s been no official announcement of a second season, but I fully expect there to be one considering the popularity of the series.

Sharing a lot of parallels with The Last of Us, Heavenly Delusion was an immersive, often gripping, and occasionally funny journey through both an impossible utopia of cloistered kids and the journey of two kids who aren’t sure quiet who they are.

Even if Kiruko isn’t sure who they are, we end with Maru asserting that he’s quite sure, and that he’ll protect them when they need it and they’ll protect him when he needs it. If and when the second season airs, I’m sure both of their roles will be tested thoroughly.

Heavenly Delusion – 12 – Expulsion from Paradise

Trigger Warning: This episode included a depiction of sexual assault. Viewer and reader discretion is advised.

I couldn’t really tell you what Tokio’s weird alternate universe dream was about, only that it was very unsettling and set the mood perfectly for an episode dedicated to taking everyone—both its characters and us—far out of out comfort zone. This episode expertly and utterly destroys what little order and normalcy existed previously.

Immediately after Tokio’s dream. Mimihime & Co.’s normal lunch by what looks like a concerted cyber and physical attack on the facility. The walls of this incubator of gifted children are finally crumbling from an outside they’ve never seen. Heaven has been breached, and will never be the same.

Kiruko and Maru’s side of the story starts out as normally as the Heaven kids’ lunch, until they find themselves in the biggest settlement they’ve ever seen, so big that the word town is the more accurate word to describe it. And at first, our duo is elated. Proper civilization at last!

They don’t even mind the red tape they have to cut through in order to gain official access to the town’s credit chip-based economy, because those baroque bureaucratic systems are itself both a relief and a novelty to two who have had so little. And then Kiruko learns Inazaki Robin is in that town, and schedules a meeting.

From that point onward, Maru notices a change in Kiruko; they’re talking to themself more. Kiruko has to go see Robin, and apparently they have to go alone. Maru doesn’t mind; to him, it seems like a quick errand from which she’ll be back in a jiffy. I’m still sure a part of him is weary of the two of them separating, and not just because Kiruko is technically his bodyguard.

Kiruko does not walk, but run to the filtration plant where Robin apparently works, and upon catching sight of him, they beam as their eyes tear up and their hair sways in the wind. It’s a classic “beautiful reunion” image, juxtaposed with Robin’s reaction to seeing Kiruko: a combination of fear, disgust, and something even worse.

The moment Kiruko and Maru separated, I knew things were going to take a turn. Robin’s face confirmed it.

Speaking of taking a turn, Takahara’s director is apparently crushed in the rubble after hopping out of her wheelchair like Dr. Strangelove and trying to make a run for it. The kids are on their own, and to their credit, Mimihime and her fellow older kids exhibit exemplary calm under such circumstances. But once the little ones are safe, they investigate the hole in the wall.

Kiruko’s reunion with Robin is lit beautifully just as Kiruko was upon laying eyes on Robin. Kiruko is going a mile a minute with things they want to say, but Robin urges them to cool down, they can take their time talking. They do, and they learn what became of Robin and how he came to become a key player in the restoration of civilization.

When Robin offers use of a bath to Kiruko, it seems oddly timed. I was so young and innocent when he first offered it, too. So was Kiruko. They break down with relief in the tub as the shower ticks their back with tiny droplets. They were so scared, for so long, but now everything is going to be okay.

The imagery of this entire episode is stunning in its thematic resonance. Just as Kiruko appears through the crack in the door, creating a slight pillar of light in the darkness, the Heaven kids are emerging from the darkness into the outside of the outside, the ceiling of which is dizzyingly high.

For a moment, Mimihime is afraid of falling up, so unaccustomed is she to being outdoors. Fortunately Shiro is there to cushion her fall backwards, and she is compelled to reach up into the sky at that seeming infiniteness. Contrast this with Kiruko’s rapidly diminishing freedom and welfare in one of the darkest moments I can recall watching in an anime.

Robin took away Kiruko’s clothes on purpose so he could lure them into a room and then handcuff them naked to a bed. Robin, who has either become quite the evil son of a bitch or was always this way, decides to conduct an “experiment” consisting of forcing the Haruki inside Kiruko…to watch his sister’s reflection in a mirror as Robin rapes them. Just…Jesus.

In hindsight, the warning signs and red flags were all there. I was even aware of them as things started to get dark. But nothing could have prepared me for the abject misery of this scene, especially how cruelly it combines a moment of attaining great freedom—as Mimihime does—with the worst moment of Kiruko’s life.

Not only are they being assaulted, but the perpetrator was their greatest hero, the person that inspired propelled them in everything they did. Well, Inazaki Robin is a monster far more terrifying than the deadliest Hiruko. I simply don’t know where anyone goes from here, or what comes next. All the walls have crumbled and fallen.

 

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Heavenly Delusion – 11 – Two by Two, Eyes of Blue

The new Fifth-Years are doing a number on Mimihime—whom I only just realized has animal ears in addition to ESP—but her pains are nothing compared to Tokio’s labor, an unprecedented event at the academy. Not only that, it seems Kona can sense some of that pain.

This episode is “Heaven”-heavy, so by nature it had to be “Hell”-light. The first of Kiruko and Maru’s two scenes keeps it light, naming the totally bitchin’ Mitsubishi Delica Star Wagon they inherited from Juuichi by merging all of their names: Kirukomaru II. The “II” representing Juuichi, which means 11 but should be read as Roman numerals.

Tokio successfully gives birth to what looks to be a healthy boy, but the Director confides in Sawatari that she is planning to transplant her brain into the child when he’s old enough. To get over the fact she’s 80 and may not make it, she’ll transplant her brain into Assistant Director Aoshima’s first.

First of all, her casually saying “the assistant director knows they’ll eventually become the director” sent a chill down my spine. That’s not how promotion works, lady! But yeah, what might’ve been good intentions to rebuild civilization has clearly gotten to the Director’s head. She has delusions of grandeur (and immortality) and there’s no law or god to stop her.

The twist of the knife is that Sawatari is recalling this chilling meeting with the Director while watching Tokio’s newborn in the nursery, and who should pop her head in to call the baby cute but the Director’s next vessel, poor Aoshima. This is some demented Being John Malkovich shit.

In Kiruko and Maru’s only other scene, they stop at an abandoned and completely gutted house to sleep for a bit, but because Maru slept off his carsickness he’s wide awake, and spots a plume of illuminated smoke on the night horizon. He wakes Kiruko, who gets out their map and compass and determines that the smoke is coming from the Takahara facility.

We then zoom in on that smoking, churning, foreboding complex, which resembles neither “Heaven” nor the facility where Sawatari and Aoshima are (or were). Stalking its halls is Robin—or possibly whomever had their brain transplanted into Robin? Who knows with this show!

Mimihime, bless her heart, reaches out to Ohma, one of the Fifth Year kids who is off on her own, saying she’d just annoy the other kids and crying big sopping tears. Mimihime gets out her handkerchief to dry Ohma’s eyes.

When Ohma opens them, they glow blue, and Mimihime experiences her worst fear: the wall opens up and she’s restrained, poked, prodded, and stabbed by implacable machines. It’s literally a heavenly delusion.

Mimihime went through the same hallucinatory nightmarish experience as Kiruko, which all but confirms Ohma is, or will be, the Hiruko at the Immortal Order parking garage. Mimihime wakes up in the infirmary where she encounters Kona, who explains that he and Tokio are now “synchronized.” While Tokio is fine, he’s stuck in bed.

As he talks, Kona transforms into a hideous, very Hiruko-like monster. It may just be another hallucination, but it’s still creepy as fuck. But it’s also productive, as Mimihime is able to will away the illusion and restore reality Kona and the room.

Having stumbled upon a defense for the hallucinations, the next time she sees Ohma (who was waiting for her to return her handkerchief), she again removes her dark glasses, and is again restrained by machines. Only this time, Mimihime is able to will those away, telling Ohma she’s okay; she doesn’t have to cry or apologize.

The Adults at Takahara are the blind being led by the artificial: following directions for building something they know not what. We then see Sawatari and Aoshima speaking in the Director’s office, but the Director isn’t there; just her wheelchair. Are they following her orders, are they planning a revolt against her? Also, Tokio gave birth to twins.

The next morning all the children are summoned to the pool, but not to swim. They’re reunited with Tokio, who tells them she’ll be returning to them soon. Then the robot announces that there is to be a test. It will be a long test, but they’ll have plenty of time.

It also explicitly calls them all “Hiruko” for the first time, and a couple of the children comment that hearing that words sounded like they were hearing their real name for the first time. The test, no doubt, involves most if not all of them transforming into horrible monsters, doesn’t it? I hate this!

Mind you, this isn’t bad. It’s just upsetting, even if it had become all but inevitable that these kids would end up being the Hiruko that Kiruko and Maru hunt in the near future. It sucks because I’ve come to care about Tokio, Kona, Mimihime, and the other kids, and don’t want them to suffer.

But they surely will, and all to satisfy the whims of one megalomaniacal old woman, out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.

Heavenly Delusion – 10 – Stone Cold

It was clear from the jump that this was a different kind of episode of Heavenly Delusion, but not due to its narrative content, which is almost its weakest aspect. Instead, it’s how that content was presented, which was with a dynamic, freewheeling style more reminiscent of Trigger anime.

That’s no coincidence, as Trigger’s own Ikarashi Kai is the guest storyboarder, director, and key animator this week. And the episode looked fantastic. So fantastic, it almost overshadows the fact that Juuichi…wasn’t lying about the “walled city” where women held men captive as breeding pigs!

Juuichi drives Kiruko and Maru to the former school where there’s a huge hole in the wall. The place is abandoned, but when a sudden rush of icy air threatens to kill Kiruko and Maru, Kiruko just manages to fire off a round of the Kiru-Beam and save both their lives. There’s a Hiruko in there, and it uses ice to freeze its prey. Both the visuals and sound design excel at portraying the extreme cold.

Kiruko doesn’t take too much time warming up, instead choosing to bum-rush the monster and fire the beam at it before it freezes them to death. The plan seems to work, and the beam cleaves the Hiruko in half, but the half with the core gets away, and thus the threat lingers.

From there, Juuichi is reunited with two of his fellow “boars”—men who were awake and escaped the women when the man-eater arrived. They brought with them a baby boy—Juuichi’s son. His reunion is so touching even a tough nut like Kiruko wells up a little bit.

A hot bath and a soft sofa later, Kiruko and Maru are planning to head to the Takahara facility the next morning, but before morning arrives, the Hiruko returns. Kiruko grabs Juuichi’s son and runs as far away as they can, only to find the cold is following them. That’s when Maru realizes that the kid is the Hiruko: capable of creating deadly ice to defend himself.

In this week’s seemingly cursory check-in at Takahara, Tokio remains isolated as she carries her child to term, while her friends are suddenly introduced to a new batch of “fifth year” kids who are shot in such a way as to look sinister, even evil.

That intro is juxtaposed with Juuichi gruesomely murdering one of his fellow boars with a circular saw while his son plays with blocks (the block sounds also accompany the shots of the creepy new Takahara kids). I don’t 100% know why, but I guess he believed the man he killed sounded the alarm that he was escaping?

Either way, something’s not quite right with Juuichi, but at least he’s reunited with his son, who has special powers like one of the X-Men. Since he has no more need to travel, he gives Kiruko and Maru his van, which breaks down ten feet from where they started off. Hopefully they’ll get it running again so they can get to the fireworks factory Takahara Academy to uncover more mysteries.

Heavenly Delusion – 09 – All Hands Meeting

Asura taught Kona how to use his powers, and used their powers to heal other children when they were hurt. Kona loved Asura, even if he didn’t really know what love was, because the adults didn’t teach him. One day, Asura told Kona they “knew what they had to do”, and ended up taking their life, something Kona was helpless to prevent.

Asura was the last member of Kona’s group, leaving him alone with his drawings. That is, until a young Tokio takes it upon herself to reach out to Kona, not to say anything in particular (she doesn’t have any more experience with love and loss than he) but just to be there for him. That first little interaction became what Asura told Kona would be a special other kind of love. And it’s that special love that has the facility’s director on the move.

This is an episode that jumps between “Heaven” and the “Hell” of the present-day world where Kiruko and Maru are still looking for the doctor, Robin, and “Heaven”. Maru’s tooth has grown back, which isn’t surprising considering his other abilities. They’re both surprised by a sudden earthquake – the first in ages – and head to a collapsed building where they find a scavenger who might have information.

What is Mimihime always looking at? Looks like it’s something no one else can see: the “ghost” of Asura, still hanging up there. She and Shiro head to class, where they learn from the robo-teacher that Tokio won’t be around “for a while”; we see her being carted off in street clothes by Dr. Aoshima, who the director later names assistant director, angering a colleague.

While office politics unfold in a human experimentation facility in the past, Kiruko and Maru are told some very colorful stories by the scavenger, who calls himself Juuichi. One that stands out is about a school surrounded by a wall; a matriarchal society within abducts men and use them as breeding pigs and slaves.

While the school itself resembles “Heaven”, the fact is this guy is pumping Kiruko and Maru for cash, having covered up a sign with his van that they’d have recognized: the bird logo on the gun, and the box at the stoner colony. They’ve arrived at Takahara Academy.

Well, not exactly…it’s one of eighteen branches and two facilities on a Takahara flier. Kiruko learns that it’s kind of an orphanage where children go willingly to rest and relax, but also learn. They imagine such a place would be tough, but then remembers their sister and friends and figures they would have probably adapted if they had the same family-like structure, found or otherwise.

Kiruko and Maru are headed to one of the two facilities, hoping to learn more. Meanwhile, at the all-hands emergency meeting at one of those facilities, which I’m assuming is in the past, the Director announces to the shock off all that Tokio is pregnant. This despite them not teaching the children of the nursery about anything related to sex or even gender.

My theory that Tokio is Maru’s mother remains intact for another week, assuming that time difference is roughly equal to Maru’s current age. That said, Tokio being pregnant is regarded by the boss as a “crisis.” Are they caring for these kids, or keeping them isolated because they know they’re potentially dangerous? Curiouser and curiouser…

Heavenly Delusion – 08 – Behind the Curtain

Dr. Usami takes Kiruko and Maru past a gauntlet of people who want to ask him about their prosthetics and leads them to the room with the curtain. Beyond that curtain is a young woman being kept alive by machines, calling to mind shades of Akira. Usami wants Maru to try to kill her the way he did the dormant Man-eaters in the garage.

Why not just disconnect her from the machines? Because they’re not just keeping her alive—they’re keeping her from becoming a monster. This is how Maru and Kiruko learn that all Man-eaters began as humans. Maru places his hand on her heavily bandaged body, and discovers that she has a core. He can do what Usami wishes and end her pain. But what does she want?

Thanks to a tablet, the young woman Hoshio is able to communicate her final wish: to see the sky. She’s been in that dark, depressing room for God knows how long clinging to both life and humanity. Kiruko and Maru agree that they won’t do as Usami asks unless Hoshio can see the sky, so Usami makes it happen.

The episode lingers on the logistics and careful maneuvering needed to move her and all her machines and cables just a few feet to the balcony where a impossibly gorgeous azure sky opens up above them. She stares up at that sky with her single blue eye, takes a few breaths, and then Maru lets her finally rest. It is without doubt one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever seen, and not by accident: this episode was guest story boarded by a KyoAni veteran.

After she’s passed, Kiruko and Maru discover that Hoshio left a few final messages on the tablet, thanking Usami for letting her die as a human, thanking him for giving her his eye, and for everything, and telling him she loves him. Usami’s mask slips and he breaks down in big sobbing tears.

As all this was going on, Mizuhashi was apparently killed hitting her head when a rock was thrown by an Immortal Order member. Liviuman storms the facility, and IO’s staff and patients evacuate. Kiruko asks the IO folks about the photo of their Dr. Usami and Robin, and they recognize Robin, much to Kiruko’s delight. They could be inching closer to finding him.

But just as Kiruko and Maru are getting ready to escort Usami after he buries Hoshio, he shoots himself in the head on the roof of the facility, cradling Hoshio in his arms. He’s also holding the same button as the kids’ uniforms in Heaven. Just as he no longer saw any reason to continue Immortal Order with Hoshio gone, he no longer wanted to live in a world without her.

Faced with a dead Usami with a dead Hoshio in his arms, Maru begins to despair, saying that unlike Usami or Robin, his hands “only bring death”. Kiruko hurries to him and takes his hands in theirs, telling him that’s not true. Those hands, my God. Countless people have been saved by him killing Man-eaters. He’s saved Kiruko more than once as well. That matters.

While what happened to Hoshio and Usami is tragic, I’m glad the episode ends on a less somber note, with Kiruko and Maru closer than ever. No matter what happens in this world, if they can just stay together and keep surviving, you get the sense everything will be okay.

Only the episode doesn’t quite end with them. It ends with Mimihime’s dream of being in a dark and scary place, before suddenly being joined by someone who offers their hand (probably her crush Shiro).

When Tokio sees her grinning on the balcony, she asks what the dream was about that made her so happy, and Mimihime says she’s already forgotten. But even if the details of the dream are gone, the emotions remain.

Similarly, the precise nature and timeframe of the “Heaven” where Mimi and Tokio reside remains shrouded in mystery and intrigue, but what matters is that I desperately want to learn whatever answers Heavenly Delusion is willing to provide in its final five episodes.

CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKER

Heavenly Delusion – 07 – In Your Head

We spend this week totally away Tokio’s side of this story, and since last week the gears turning in my head have be believing we’re dealing with two different timelines. If Tokio and Kona are Maru’s parents, then “Heaven” is a facility that was running just before the Collapse.

This also supports the theory that “Heaven’s” children were the experiments that led to the creation of the Man-Eaters/Hiruko, which caused the Collapse, and why Maru has the power to kill them. Mind you I’ve not read any of the source material, so we’ll see how right or wrong I am!

What’s great about Heavenly Delusion is that the theorizing is fun, but not vital. I’m fine to let mysteries to unravel in their own time, and in the meantime we have this beautiful story of the found family/rom-com duo of  Kiruko and Maru roving the gorgeously rendered ruins of civilization.

This week the pair put their two brain cells together to make a sign advertising their Hiruko-killin’ services, and the show pulls of a nifty bit of misdirection. We’re led for a moment to believe they’re about to be captured by Immortal Order, but they’re actually scooped up by a group zealously opposed to IO, called Liviuman.

Led by the charismatic Mizuhashi, it is an organization that opposes IO’s efforts to replace human bodies with machines and achieve immortality. Mizuhashi herself was the victim of a forced amputation of her leg, and while wandering the facility, encountered a human being chopped in pieces yet still somehow alive enough to beg her to kill them.

That’s some haunting, Mitty-ass shit right there, and sent shivers down my spine, because my mind immediately went to Dr. Usami, the doctor who put Haruki’s brain into his sister’s body (evidence of which is clear when Kiruko is bathing and her hair is back, revealing their head scar). He’s still up to his old tricks.

Kiruko is obviously naked when they’re bathing, and Maru notes that “she” seems “less coolheaded” than usual, like the Haruki in “her” is coming out. Kiruko hops out of the hot bath, stands before Maru in their birthday suit, and declares that they’ve “always” been Haruki in their head. Maru gets in the bath after them, chastened…but also turned on.

The next day, Kiruko and Maru agree to take care of the Hiruko rumored to be located on Immortal Order’s premises. Mizuhashi rallies Liviuman and stages a big loud protest as a diversion, allowing our duo to slip into a well-lit parking lot—a curiosity in a world with no power grid.

As for Hirukos, they find none that are moving, and instead find several small, white growths that appear to be dormant. Maru uses his touch to kill them for real, one after the other, until Kiruko locates the “big boss”. I agree with them that it’s almost more annoying that they aren’t moving, but it’s also far creepier.

When the boss’ face lights up, other Hirukos suddenly spring forth from inside the floor, walls, and ceiling, exhibiting an ability they haven’t seen before. The Kiru-Beam has no effect on the swarming monsters and runs out of juice. Kiruko is set upon by one, then two, then five of the little blighters.

Then, the unthinkable happens. One of the Hirukos grabs hold of her harm with its blade-filled mouth and bites down hard. Her arm is chomped off; then one of her feet. Maru is several yards away, similarly overwhelmed. Kiruko can’t do anything.

Fearing this might be the end, Kiruko calls out for Robin to help before passing out. But then they comes to…with Maru kissing them. He’s doing so to snap Kiruko out of what was apparently a hallucination; the boss Hiruko hypnotized her into thinking Hirukos were everywhere and making them shoot at nothing.

If Maru wasn’t there—and immune to the hypnosis—Kiruko might’ve been toast for real. That said, they still don’t let Maru sneak another kiss—one was enough, and they acknowledge it was necessary to snap them out of their trance. But goddamn was that nightmarish and stressful. I honestly didn’t know if Kiruko was actually being horribly maimed before our eyes.

With all the dormant Hiruko killed, Kiruko and Maru start to hear the approaching footsteps of fine black wingtips. A man in a well-fitting black suit, lavender tie, and eyepatch appears, holding a gun and inspecting the dead Hiruko. He then turns to the duo, and his gun clacks as he does.

That said, he doesn’t pull the gun on them. Instead, he asks them if they can kill something else for him. Kiruko says sure, if they can, and depending on what exactly he wants. She also mentions she’s looking for Dr. Usami, and the much younger man than she knew says that he’s Dr. Usami.

Clearly, the not-good-at-all doctor’s research on immortality has borne some fruiton on a personal level. We’ll have to wait until next week to learn the unspeakable but inevitable human cost, and if we’re actually dealing with a post-“Heaven” scenario in which Maru is the son of that facility’s residents.

Heavenly Delusion – 06 – The King of Hotels

The bad news? This episode ends with Kiruko and Maru arguably no closer to reaching “heaven” than last week. The good news? Everything else. Upon reaching the “100% clean water” area of the map, a girl named Totori points them to the source of said water.

They end up finding a dead man, another who is badly-mauled but still alive, and a monster. Kiruko lets the beast chase them out into the sunlight, where they fire the Kiru-Beam at a concrete support that falls on the monster. Only Maru isn’t able to kill it with his Maru-Touch like he has other Hiruko.

It turns out this isn’t a monster at all—just a big, hungry bear with no fur on its head. They manage to escape atop a concrete pylon, but Kiruko drops the battery to the Beam, and Maru has to scramble down to get it. Kiruko can’t get down so easily, as they don’t possess anything like Maru’s physical skills.

Kiruko promises to let Maru touch their boobs if he climbs down to kill the bear, and he leaps off the pylon immediately. Kiruko jumps soon afterward and ends up doing the deed, telling Maru they always knew the Beam would fire, as it was recharged with Maru’s “horny energy.”

From there, this episode goes directly to Horny Jail—or I should say Horny Hotel—without so much as passing “GO”. Maru wants to collect the debt by groping Kiruko, and Kiruko ends up making a girly sound that surprises them both, but also attracts the attention of Totori, the hotel manager.

Totori takes Maru to his separate room, where she then attempts to seduce him in exchange for cash or a solar light—whichever works for her. Horny as he is, Maru isn’t at all ready to go all the way with this girl, but when she places his hand on her breast, he “gets in” in the same way he does when using Maru-Touch on Hiruko.

We even see a pinkish-red “core” that is similar to the ones he’s crushed in Hiruko…and which was left behind when Tarao was cremated.  Unfortunately, both his phrasing and the position he’s in with a naked Totori on the bed cause quite a bit of misunderstanding.

Back at “Heaven”, Tokio is told there’s no sign of an illness; her nausea may have been caused by stress and fatigue, and she rests in the infirmary. While there, she has a dream with the ghost of Asura, who floats in the air, has an alien-like face, and asks Tokio what she’s good at.

Back at the hotel, Totori lets Maru off without any fuss, as she admits she came on to him. She also, completely unbidden, reveals the depths of her own horniness by declaring that by offering the cleanest, comfiest futons and having sex with the customers she likes, she intends to become the “King of Hotels”.

You have to admire the spirit, but the next morning Totori’s mood has changed completely, as the Boss, the maimed man Kiruko and Maru found, has passed away. Kiruko asks if Totori wants to join them on their journey, but she declines, so Maru tells her to instead become the King of Hotels she wants to be.

I don’t know if this is the last we see of Totori, or if Maru touching her boob indicated she was a kind of proto-Hiruko, but she was certainly a fun, complex, and compelling side character.

But saying goodbye to Totori does not end the horniness. While one of the adults confirms that Tokio’s footprint was on the wall in the creepy mutant baby nursery, Tokio slips out of the infirmary (she continues to not show up on surveillance video) to see Kona.

While previous instances suggested Tokio wasn’t a party to all the sexy shenanigans going around, here we see both she and Kona are ready to get down. As they disrobe, Kona admits he liked Asura, but assures Tokio it was different than his love for her.

Whether you’re an orphan in the care of a cute bodyguard or an orphan in a bizarre cloistered medical facility, there’s apparently no suppressing that basic human need for close, even intimate connection. The revelation that she and Kona are knocking boots lends some vital context to her vomiting last week, as it’s possible she’s already pregnant.

Heavenly Delusion – 05 – Pride (In the Name of Love)

Back in the remnants of Tokyo, Maru plays old 8-bit arcade games while he and Kiruko ponder their next move. Maru is interrupted by some thugs who judge a book by it’s cover and try to bully him, but he fights back and kicks all eight of their asses, suffering only a chipped front tooth and a bruise on the cheek. Kiruko arrives to mop up, assuming the thugs started the fight—and they mostly did by picking on him—but there’s no doubt he escalated.

We learn that before Mikura took him in and taught him how to kill Hiruko, he lived in a home with a bunch of other kids, but that place was eventually shut down and the kids were split up among other places. Maru ended up in a roving gang—which explains why he can handle himself in a fight—until Mikura entered his life. Unlike Kiruko, he didn’t see Mikura as a woman so much as another person he had to listen to and obey. It’s in these scenes of his youth that his resemblance to Tokio is really made clear.

Deciding to keep Maru hidden while they goes on a shopping / gun-charging run downtown, Kiruko overhears the thugs still searching for Maru, and also mentioning a “Ministry of Reconstruction”, which they believe may just be an urban legend. They’re glad and even proud to hear “their Maru” is tough, but then wonders why—after all, when their mission is complete, they’ll be all alone again.

Kiruko is in that state of mind when they return to the room to find Maru missing, and immediately panics. Turns out he was next door jerking off to a porno mag, but he can tell how shook Kiruko is, and gives them a supportive hug. He also apologizes for being so dramatic about his past without considering that Kiruko’s was worse…at least in terms of what they lost.

Back in “Heaven”, despite the efforts of the children to keep Tarao in good spirits with a music and dance performance, the next morning the AI cheerfully reports that he has passed away. The children are allowed to participate in the memorial service.

Tokio is particularly wracked by the loss, and brings up the only other kid to die, Asura, with whom Kona was friends. Asura died of suicide, but the director blames their own research for causing her death. When we see Tokio vomiting into a toilet, it’s a bad sign. Is she now ill like Tarao, either just because, or somehow from her adventure with Kuku?

The paths of Kiruko/Maru and Tokio edge ever-so-slightly closer together when a man who was on the boat comes to Kiruko and Maru asks if he can hire them as bodyguards. He’s headed for a place called “Immortal Order” with a priceless sample of the Hiruko. But when he shows them the jar containing the sample, it has already rotted away to nothing.

Nevertheless, Kiruko and Maru are keen on going to this “Immortal Order”, which is in the same area on a map Kiruko purchased where there’s 100% clean water, suggesting it might be the “Heaven” Maru is seeking. Of course, it’s long since been established there’s nothing heavenly about “Heaven”, and the additional label “strange people” is also foreboding.

The researchers at “Heaven” don’t know what killed Tarao (who was immune to everything prior to taking ill), or whether it will happen to the other kids. And when they cremate Tarao’s body, a bizarre, creepy growth remains, untouched by the flames. The man from the boat mentioned transplanting parts of monsters into humans to give them powers and make them immortal.

Heavenly Delusion – 04 – Touching Me, Touching You

The fish monster that attacks the boat Kiruko and Maru are on proves to be a slippery customer. When Kiruko fires the Kiru-Beam, it either misses or fails to fire, causing a large cloud of smoke and nothing else. But Kiruko notes the aqueous membrane around the Hiruko, and determines that the best place to fight it is not outside where it has access to all the water in the world, but in the maze-like, dry interior of the boat.

Meanwhile, in “Heaven”, Kuku leads Tokio to a ventilation hatch that leads to the “babies” Kuku says she saw. Tokio doesn’t have Kuku’s astonishing physical gifts, so she uses one of the cleaner robots to give her a boost up to the hatch, which is located some twenty feet up the wall. Curiously, despite there being surveillance cameras pointed everywhere, including at this very hatch, neither Tokio nor Kuku appear on the screen.

After briefly arguing with the crew of the boat, Kiruko executes their plan, which relies on the fish following them and Maru using his “Maru-Touch” to kill it when he’s able to touch it. That time comes when the fish is lured into a cargo bay full of boxes and dried marijuana, which sucks all the water away from the fish and dries it out. Maru is then able to finish the monster off just by touching its skin with his hand.

Kuku takes Tokio to a kind of weird laboratory nursery where even weirder “babies” are being raised with targets for faces, vaguely resembling infant versions of the Angels from Evangelion. Tokio puts her hand on the glass and one of the babes takes notice and even reaches out to her. An intruder alarm sounds and Kuku and Tokio book it out of there, after which the baby says “To-ki-o”.

What’s odd is that the intruder alarm doesn’t take the adults to the nursery where Tokio and Kuku were—once again, they don’t appear on the surveillance monitors—but instead to another part of the facility entirely. This place also has some serious Evangelion vibes, but in place of Ikari Gendou, there’s an elderly woman in a wheelchair conversing with a robot. As Alice once said: Curiouser and curiouser…

Once they reach land, the gangster boat crew offers Kiruko and Maru cash for taking care of their Hiruko problem. Kiruko refuses payment, since they and Haru had to either act or be killed, but does ask if the crew recognizes the bird logo on the Kiru-Beam. They say it’s the logo of a home goods store in the ruined town, but that turns out to be a completely different logo. Kiruko and Maru laugh about it while tucking into soup made from youkan.

Back in heaven, Tokio watches Shiro take Mimihime by the hand and run off; she follows them and overhears Shiro asking about the nude photo Mimihime sent him, which she knows nothing about and has disappeared from his phone. He then tries to explain the “urges” he feels when he sees her, but comes of to her sounding like he want to eat her.

When Tokio visits the critically ill Tarao, he tries to kiss her, but she recoils and runs off in a tizzy. Kona sees her running, follows her, and stays with her until she calms down. When she tells him how she’s scared how everyone is acting so weird, he tells her there’s no reason to be confused about people falling in love with one another.

Tokio then says if there’s someone among them she wants to touch and be touched by, it would be Kona. Kona, in turn, says he’d like it to be her. This absolutely makes her day, and she goes to bed positively giddy, only to be interrupted by a summons to Tarao’s hospital room, where he’s asking for her.

Once she arrives, he asks the adults to leave, apologizes for having tried to kiss her, and then tells her he’s not going to get better, and she needs to run away, because this place is “dangerous”. Is it Tokio’s special ability to manipulate surveillance footage, or is that the old woman’s robot’s doing? And even if she wanted to leave her life behind and run away, how would Tokio go about doing that? I guess we’re going to find out.

Heavenly Delusion – 03 – Sister’s Keeper

Five years ago in 2034 (a decade after the “calamity”), a girl named Takehaya Kiriko did indeed race electric go-karts in Asakusa as the stoner commune resident recalled. She was on a team led by Inazaki Robin, and lived with her little brother Haruki in a makeshift orphanage with other kids.

Haruki admired Robin, who we first meet rather violently curb-stomping two men threatening him. He also taught him not to look in the eyes of his opponents, but instead focus on their collar and the ground under one’s own feet. In a brief scene, we also see that Kiriko and the mysterious “Doc” seem to have some kind of relationship.

It’s a hard-scrabble existence, but compared to the present-day Kiruko considered that time to be akin to heaven. When Kiriko was cold at night, she was about to climb into Haruki’s bed, but an alarm for a man-eater sounds, and Haruki gets up and follows Robin (against Robin’s wishes). Little did he know that would be their last night together.

As much as Robin (and Kiriko) want to keep him out of danger, Haruki is determined to keep his sister and friends safe and make himself useful to Robin. He fashions his own crossbow, and before Kiriko’s next race he surveys the area from a vantage point.

He finds a man-eater with cloaking ability in the arcade where there are no cameras set up, and when he can’t get anyone’s attention, decides to take care of it himself. Only his pea-shooter isn’t enough against its thick hide, and when he stabs it in the “face” it grabs him and starts to suck him in.

Kiriko takes the lead in the race, and is the first to reach the arcade, where she finds a horrifying scene. She crashes her kart into the man-eater, then tears Haruki free, but his arms and legs are already gone. Kiriko holds Haruki’s body and cries for help as his life fades.

After that, things are fuzzy for Haruki, who is briefly conscious for his sister’s embrace. We get flashes of his life with her before the orphanage when it was just the two of them, and during some of the happier times thereafter. These scenes are full of nostalgia, longing, and melancholy, for they are times that will never be again.

While this is going on, the “Doc”, who one of Haruki’s friends said was doing human experimentation, seems to be doing just that to Haruki, sawing off the top of his head in a gruesome, unsanctioned operation of his own design.

After one last vision of the last time he was with his sister, where the arcade and everything around them is blood red and Kiriko walks away from him, Haruki comes to in a hospital bed…and finds himself in Kiriko’s body. Whether she had a traumatic brain injury that meant certain death, or she volunteered to donate her body to her brother, Kiriko is gone.

The other doctors talk as if it’s still Kiriko in that bed, and that due to some kind of mental break she now believes she’s the little brother she lost to the man-eater. But our omniscient POV of the operation suggests that “Doc” really did put Haruki’s brain in Kiriko’s body.

The length of Haruki’s recovery is such that by the time he can walk around, everything has changed in Asakusa. The Doc skipped town, while Robin is rumored to have either been murdered or disappeared. Haruki decides to believe he’s not dead, and longs to find both him and the Doc for answers.

Haruki assumed the name Kiruko (an apparent merging of his and his sister’s names) and began working on his own as a handyman and bodyguard-for-hire thereafter, which led to him to meeting Maru. Having heard all of this, Maru still can’t deny his attraction to Kiruko, and laments he’d never be able to find a girl with whom he gets along so well.

But now Maru and we know the truth, and what drives Kiruko—who I’ll refer to with they/them pronouns going forward. The thus far peaceful ferry ride back to Tokyo is interrupted by the arrival of another man-eater, this time resembling a fish with many human arm-like appendages. After the credits we get a little scene in “Heaven” where Kona is drawing a baby, and Kuku reports she’s seen a real baby, only “without a face”, which she believes to be normal.

It dawns on me that the drawings Kona is drawing seemingly from out of his imagination (like the fish with arms) are the man-eaters in the outside world. Is this simply a form of ESP, or is he actually conjuring these monsters through the drawings? It’s just one of many answers I’m yearning for as Kiruko and Maru hopefully have better luck finding “Heaven”.

Heavenly Delusion – 02 – Something Else Is Going to Fall

Last week we learned the youthful residents of “Heaven” were cut off from outside world. This week we learn they’re also horny as all get-out. Girls are making out, Mimihime is sending nude photos to Shiro, and Tokio likes Mimihime and yearns for Kona’s drawings, while she’s oblivious to her friend liking her.

Later, one of the more adventurous of them uses maintenance robots to climb up a column, but when they shut down he falls from a great height onto his back and is somehow completely fine. Between that and how nimble Kuku is, these kids are special in more ways than one. In the meantime, Tokio can’t stop thinking about the Outside.

On that Outside, Hiruko wakes up from her drugged slumber and rouses Maru; there’s a monster out there. The inn manager tells them to keep away but they believe they can take this guy. We then learn the manager doesn’t want them to kill the monster because she believes it merged with her son Yuto when it attacked him, and won’t hurt her.

This is promptly proven wrong when the monster slices her to bits right in front of Hiruko and Maru, and with the Kiru-Beam already out of power, Maru uses his special ability to grasp the monster’s Nokker-like core and pop it, causing instant death. This whole scene was gorgeously, starkly lit and animated, and the monster with its razor whips was scary as hell.

The next morning the two continue their journey to “Tomato Heaven”. Maru demonstrates he’s a good boy when he hesitates to retake the batteries they gave the now-dead manager. He’s rewarded with a hair-muss by Kiruko, which makes him blush. They then lower a raft kept afloat by jerrycans down a great cliff that leads to their destination. Neither of them know if there are sharks or crocs in the water, so they row as quickly as possible to land.

We learn that there’s someone else out there someone with Maru’s face, to whom he must administer a drug in order to presumably heal him of something. In a flashback, we learn that a dying young woman named Mikura was the one to sent Kiruko and Maru on their journey to the place called “Heaven”, and the Kiru-Beam to protect him.

He believes his look-alike will be in “Heaven”. Signs outside the “Tomato Heaven” farm compound warn that trespassers will be “killed mercilessly”, but when some farmers spot the girl and boy they’re a lot friendlier, and take them to their leader, Kusakabe. He leads a commune and a good portion of their crops is cannabis.

That night while having dinner, Kiruko and Maru learn that the farmers entertain themselves by getting high each night. Kiruko determines that the look-alike isn’t there becaue no one recognized Maru, but ironically someone recognizes her. He even has a photo of the person he calls Takehaya Kiriko, an electro-kart racer believed to have lost it after killing their brother in a race.

When Maru sees the photo, he’s amazed by the similarity to Kiruko, who insists she’s not that person. They then spot the same three-footed bird logo on a box that is on the Kiru-Beam, but the stoner farmers aren’t really sure where the box came from. The bottom line is, this isn’t the Heaven they’re looking for.

That night, Kiruko and Maru take a boat back to Tokyo (a service I’m surprised exists in such a dog-eat-dog world), and Maru admits he doesn’t care about finding Heaven anymore. He just wants to live on the farm with Kiruko, to whom he confesses and then suddenly leans in to try to kiss her.

Not only is Kiruko not interested in farming and getting high for a living, but she also politely rejects Maru’s advance and confession. Then she tells him something neither he nor I expected: while she has a woman’s body, her mind is that of a man. Now we know why she tried to kiss herself in the mirror last week. Could it be Kiruko really is Takehaya Kiriko, or her brother?

The two end this episode having hit a dead end with the farm and no closer to the Heaven of Tokio, Mimihime, et al. But regardless of whether and when they do reach that place, I’m enjoying the 86-style split narratives in wildly different settings, where despite those differences teenage hormones are running amok.

Heavenly Delusion – 01 (First Impressions) – The Outside Beyond

Heavenly Delusion doesn’t start with any stern narration of the current political or ecological state of this world. In fact, it hardly has any infodumps at all. The exposition is flawlessly weaved into dialogue that feels natural and in rhythm with the story. No, we’re tossed right into the thick of things, at a strange white facility for kids who may have latent (or yet to awaken) skills, taught by robots and embracing various hobbies.

It is safe, comfortable, and more than a little sterile. But one girl Mimihime seems to be attuned to something beyond, and her friend Tokio’s tablet briefly glitches with the question “Do you want to go outside of the outside?” I couldn’t help but think of The Promised Neverland with this setting, and The Matrix’s invitation to both Neo and the viewer to Go Down the Rabbit Hole.

The other side of this world’s coin is the majority of the world, which seems to be in a state of post-apocalypse, recent enough that adults chide children for having never lived in the “before.” Kikuru (Senbongi Sayaka, fresh off what should be an award-winning performance as Princess Anisphia) is a strong, capable young woman serving as a bodyguard for Maru, a kid who wouldn’t look out of place in the facility.

Just watching Kukuru and Maru trudge through the twisted, rusty remains of civilization is a delight…until of course they find the corpses of a couple in their bed. But Production I.G. gives the entire episode the quality and style of animation you’d normally see in high-tier feature films. It is a gorgeous show, and the direction, lighting, and camerawork all excels.

Kikuru and Maru make an immediately rootable pair, especially when three old farts are hoping to take them to “heaven”. Fortunately, they have quite a trump card in the “Kiku-Beam”, as Kikuru calls it. While it looks like a kid’s toy gun, the thing fires a lethal, white-hot particle beam that melts anything in its path. Maru also shows of some really slick combat moves.

Thankfully, things don’t get out of hand, and the would-be bandits/rapists take Kikuru and Maru to their camp peacefully. Kikuru is even able to trick them into letting her charge the battery for her laser gun. There’s a sense that as desperate and horrible as conditions are for people, there’s still an unwritten code that most humans follow. That said, Kukuru is tough as nails, and implies there are far worse humans out there they need to watch out for.

Kikuru is looking for two people: someone named Inazaku Robin, and an old man whose name she doesn’t say. But she’s also looking for a place she knows only as “Heaven.” Heaven is different for everyone, both spiritually and literally, but there’s definitely a heavenly vibe to the facility where those school kids live. Tokio asks the director (who is quick to offer sleeping drugs) if there really is an Outside. The director doesn’t lie, and says there is indeed.

On their way to the next place that could be Heaven, Kiruko and Maru end up finding a habited and functioning inn; something that would have been ubiquitous in the before times but is clearly a lavish luxury today. Its keeper catches Kiruko trying to kiss her reflection; we also see scars covering her body, providing visual bonafides of her badass-ness, past trauma…or both.

When Kiruko spots a gun bag on the wall, the innkeeper says it’s for hunting monsters, and then starts acting very suspicious when Kiruko talks about monsters. There’s a wonderful sense of tension and dread in these moments, otherwise filmed in an idyllic household scene.

Kiruko and Maru are given a little more depth to their whole deal with the innkeeper teases them about the dangers of incest. Kiruko (who is ~20) assures her that Maru (~16) is nothing but her mission. This seems to anger Maru as he pushes his futon further away than she set it up that night, then instantly falls asleep.

While they were both exhausted enough from their travels to plausibly pass the ef out as soon as their heads hit the pillow, part of me wonders (dreads, really) if they were drugged so that the gun-toting innkeeper can appease the giant winged eldritch monster with their meat.

However this plays out, it’s a hell of a stinger for the next episode. The director of “Heaven” isn’t wrong about the outside being a kind of hell by comparison. But it’s also a place of freedom, where that facility looks like a bastion of control and potential for abuse. It seems inevitable for the heaven and hell of this world to bleed into one another before long.